


Strange Reckoning

by rhodrymavelyne



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:53:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26935426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhodrymavelyne/pseuds/rhodrymavelyne
Summary: After months of being apart, after waiting for Will at the Normal Chapel, Hannibal Lecter finally catches a glimpse of him, only to realize just how much he’s missed his obsession of so many months…
Relationships: Bedelia Du Maurier/Hannibal Lecter, Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Kudos: 19





	Strange Reckoning

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place during Primavera. I don’t own Hannibal but for months it has owned me.

I gazed down from from above at the crowd milling within the Norman Chapel, a sharp ache tearing at my gut. A familar slim set of shoulders hidden beneath a jacket, a tousled dark head walks with slow, purposeful grace toward the altar.

When he starts to turn, I half expect it not be him. I’ve seen so many slender, dark-haired young men who’ve seemed like him from behind, only to turn toward me, revealing a different face. Only this time, I see the pensive expression I spent hours studying in my office, the tense mouth, eyes trying to conceal their brilliance behind a pair of glasses he doesn’t actually need. 

He lifts his head for one moment as if he can sense me, smell me as I’ve always sensed and smelled him. 

Yes, it truly is Will Graham this time. My Will has come to me, just as I have come to him. A feeling almost like euphoria runs through my shoulders, belly, groin, and temples, making every pleasurable sensation I’ve experienced in Italy pale by comparison. 

He has done this to me, diminished everything that was once important, eclipsing it. It’s hard to forgive Will for him, even though I’ve forgiven him for so much else. I forgave him for betraying him, for I knew his heart was divided. I forgave him for the loss of a future in Italy with Abigail, for I was the one who put an end to that when I slashed her throat. 

We could have started new lives. I’d been trying so hard to throw myself into mine, to forget Will, to not even allow myself to think about Will, concentrating on my work at the Palazzo Capone, my life with Bedelia, an attempt to enjoy and truly savor Bedelia as she deserved, to try to pay attention to other people until a ghost mocked me by invoking Will Graham’s name. Only this wasn’t true. All the empty spaces without Will had screamed with his absence. I’d simply been trying to shut them out. 

Now they cried out, sang, and would bring me to my knees if I let them. If he let them. He had this much power over me still. 

Time for a reckoning of my own. Time to show Will Graham my true heart, how much I needed him, how he’d invaded every part of my being. 

I couldn’t let go. Even now I longed to march up the aisle, take him in my arms, to run my hands under his shirt, feeling for the scar I’d left on his perfect skin. My mark, my claim, my forgiveness, the symbol that he was still mine. 

Time to scar him again, to burrow into his imagination with a valentine of flesh and blood, to allow his exquisite empathy to experience the damage he’d done. Time to lure him into candlelit darkness and…and then what? What would I do with him, once I was face to him with him once more?

I was curious what the answer would be, although for the first time I was also hesitant. Will Graham could make me hesitate like no one else. Perhaps I wanted to test this bond between us, one I’d already tested to the point of self-destruction only to see the evidence of its survivial. Evidence in the two of us being here in this time and place. 

Just how much more could either of us take? Painful as the answer might be, I was curious about that, too. 

What a strange reckoning this would be. I couldn’t predict how it would end. Only that I felt I was finally freeing myself of an entropy I hadn’t realized I’d been caught in, when I’d allowed myself to be ensnared in the deceptive comfort of preserving a peace. 

Perhaps Bedelia wanted peace, but I didn’t. I didn’t realize how much I’d tired of it until I saw Will Graham again. 

Life is never peaceful around him. It’s painful, chaotic, and beautiful, never allowing me to relax my guard. Never allowing me to get bored. 

I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed Will Graham until now. Perhaps he missed me as well. 

I was curious about that, too, painfully curious. 

Looks like we were both about to learn something.


End file.
